Pi 4

Do_Not_Book_With_MyTrip_com

Hello

I am looking at getting a Pi 4 for purposes of sitting between the hub and acting as an adblocker etc for the wifi & perhaps even running a VPN on it.

I could just buy the parts and put it together but I saw this:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/

Will this do the job please?

Thank you.

MattMattMattUK

Do_Not_Book_With_MyTrip_com said:

Hello

I am looking at getting a Pi 4 for purposes of sitting between the hub and acting as an adblocker etc for the wifi & perhaps even running a VPN on it.

I could just buy the parts and put it together but I saw this:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/

Will this do the job please?

Thank you.

The hardware is capable of it, but are you capable of setting it up to do that reliably and managing it properly on an ongoing basis? Are you aware of the disadvantages of operating a device as an adblocker vs operating one on the local device, the disadvantages of running a network wide VPN and potential slowdown that may cause by having an extra device in the middle of the loop processing all of that traffic?

Do_Not_Book_With_MyTrip_com

Yup, I know all that.

I was wondering aloud.

Definitely will add ad blocker to it.

debitcardmayhem

look for pi-hole for the blocking stuff https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pi-hole-raspberry-pi/ , you don't realy need a pi4 for that and I would get a basic pi4 kit rather than a 400 but that's just my choice. I use a pi3 for pi-hole and pi4 for TV but a 4 would be fine for both

[Deleted User]

I'd recommend just getting a small unit rather than the full keyboard type if you are using as an adblocker / VPN because once you have set it up, you will access it remotely and never need it to be connected to a keyboard / mouse/ monitor etc. It will be easy to tuck it behind your router out of sight.

I've got the following for my PiHole adblocker - it is probably over-spec but I might use it for other purposes in the future.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07WKKS471/

I'm sure you are capable but PiHole ad-blocker is not plug and play and needs a lot of tinkering and basic knowledge of the Linux command line interface and router settings - eg DNS/DHCP - if you have the time and are willing to learn it will be worthwhile but just warning you that I've spent hours playing with mine to get the optimum settings. There are other Pi based adblockers such as AdGuard Home for example.

In terms of performance though, for just ad-blocking, there is no slow down for your network, potentially a speed up as pages won't be displaying adverts and will also block ads on devices that you can't run an adblocker such as smart TV's and phone apps / games etc. I've gone the next step and set up "Unbound" as a fully recursive DNS server meaning I don't rely on any external providers and get much faster DNS responses although hardly noticeable to normal humans (30ms reduced to 1ms for DNS lookups)

Initially I found PiHole a bit aggressive and had to whitelist a number of sites to prevent problems, it was blocking tracking and adverts which sounds good but some websites / streaming apps don't like that so maybe experiment with only blocking a few devices initially to get the hang of it without upsetting the whole household.

I've also got some problems with "DNS leaks" where some devices insist on using their own preferred DNS server and therefore bypass the Adblocker so it isn't all plain sailing and has taken some tinkering to capture this.